Steward Brand has talked about Pace Layering for a long time:
Pace layers provide many-leveled corrective, stabilizing feedback throughout the system. It is in the contradictions between these layers that civilization finds its surest health. I propose six significant levels of pace and size in a robust and adaptable civilization
With this example:
The inner layers moving slowly, the outer layers moving quickly/inconsistently. About that:
Fast learns, slow remembers. Fast proposes, slow disposes. Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous. Fast and small instructs slow and big by accrued innovation and by occasional revolution. Slow and big controls small and fast by constraint and constancy. Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power.
Which can be mapped onto technology rather cleanly. Ryan Barrett did this recently. And drew this:
I find this a helpful framework to think in sometimes. For instance, if you feel frustration at how quickly or slowly a particular technology moves, are you considering its place within the layers? Perhaps that speed is because it is part of a system that pressures it to be that way or it being that way is beneficial to the system as a whole. Even zoomed into browser technology, HTML not moving as fast as JavaScript feels like it could be mapped onto Pace Layers.
Ryan says he’s not the first to do this technology mapping.
I’m far from the first to think along these lines. Erik Samsoe on Twitter (with Brand himself), Dmitri Glazkov’s Forces of the pace layering confusion, and Gartner’s Pace-layered Application Strategy. Taking a wider view, the classic 7-layer ISO network model and 4-layer IETF model are a form of pace layering applied to networking protocols.
I think of Jeremy Keith who once connected it all to front-end technology then a fella named Tom mapped it out:
Jeremy again lists people who’ve aligned with the thinking:
I gathered together examples of people who have been infected with the pace-layer mindworm who were applying the same layered thinking to other areas:
Certainly an infectious thought!